samba write to /opt/retropie/configs/all/

UDb23

Setting up a Pi4 with Retropie 4.6. Can access /opt/retropie/configs/ from Windows 10 thru samba shares but cannot write: "you need permission to perform this action". I do can write in the shared ROM folder. Apparently configs and ROM folder have the same permissions. Any suggestion ?

mitu

@UDb23 said in samba write to /opt/retropie/configs/all/:

r. Apparently configs and ROM folder have the same permissions

Yes, they should have the same permissions, both should be writeable by the pi user. Did you change any permissions on the /opt/retropie/configs folder from the command line/SSH ?

UDb23

@mitu Not at all. Brand new installation. enabled ssh. folder are seen by windows.
Want to copy and edit the es_system.cfg to usual folder under /configs but can't.
I do can copy to ROMs folder with samba, then connect thru Putty and use "sudo mc" to copy into configs. This makes editing the .cfg and themes stuff quite annoying.

mitu

Can you list the permissions on $HOME/.emulationstation ?

ls -ld $HOME/.emulationstation

UDb23

@mitu lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi 42 Apr 28 02:33 /home/pi/.emulationstation -> /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation

thanks for you help.

mitu

The permissions look fine, you might want to check /opt/retropie/configs/all itself and /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation to see if the pi user has the correct rights. But on a default install, it should.

ParadoxGBB

+1, hitting this as well. It's making my migration from the 3B harder than it should. Does this help, or is there a shortcut elsewhere with the perms that need to change?

ls -ld /opt/retropie/configs/all

drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 May 15 18:16

ls -ld /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation

drwxr-xr-x 7 pi pi 4096 May 18 17:11

mitu

@ParadoxGBB said in samba write to /opt/retropie/configs/all/:

ls -ld /opt/retropie/configs/all
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 May 15 18:16

These permissions are incorrect - the folder should be owned by the pi user. I just checked on the default image for the Pi4 (should be the same on all variants) and the /opt/retropie/configs/all is owned (and writeable) by the pi user. Same for /opt/retropie/configs.

Did you execute other steps/install anything else after installing the base image ? Or maybe you copied (as root) the configs/configs/all folder(s) from the previous install ?

ParadoxGBB

@mitu Thanks so much for the prompt reply, and apologies but I provided some incorrect info. The problem I'm having is that I installed 4.6 on my 3B and that is having the permission problem on configs/all, not my 4B.

These were the basic steps I took:

On my old 3B running 4.5.x, backed up both the shares /roms and /configs on a windows server over SAMBA and back up an image via Win32DiskImageImager. I also use the shares to do windiffs do compare upgrade configuration changes against snapshots.
Installed new 4.6 image on my RPi4B, installed the packages I wanted that were consistent with my previous 3B installation.
Carpet bombed the shares by copying over the samba shares to the new installation, tweaking / testing / fixing as necessary, which at least when I upgraded to stretch a few years ago was fairly limited and straightforward.

I more or less then repeated 2 and 3 on my 3B to upgrade the stack to 4.6, and this machine now had the permission problem I'm pretty sure from the get-go because at the copy stage I got the error for that subfolder that I had to skip.

If it'd help things I suppose I could back up and reinstall the image from scratch to confirm if it'd help, but things look pretty consistient to me and it might just impact the 3B 4.6 image.

mitu

@ParadoxGBB said in samba write to /opt/retropie/configs/all/:

If it'd help things I suppose I could back up and reinstall the image from scratch to confirm if it'd help, but things look pretty consistient to me and it might just impact the 3B 4.6 image.

Only if you want to check again by starting with the default image, otherwise this can be fixed with a simple chown for the configs folder.

ParadoxGBB

Sure, I can back up and then confirm with a fresh 4.6 3B image. Could you please confirm the syntax to fix the ownership problem (I'm a relative linux noob). Should it be simply:

sudo chown pi /opt/retropie/configs/all

Or is there more to it for correct permissions?

mitu

Should be sudo chown -R pi:pi /opt/retropie/configs.

ParadoxGBB

Thanks again. The plot thickens...

That works, but on reboot the permissions are set back to root. Now I'm really curious.

ParadoxGBB

I think I tracked it down --- fortunately I didn't change a whole ton.

I have a 8Bito lite controller that I was configuring with this 3B, and I configured it via Bluetooth. Things were not reconnecting on boot when I initially tested it, so I switched the "Configure blooth connect mode" to "background". That looks like it messes with permission settings perpetually. When I switched it back to default, the permissions keep.

Thanks again for your help mitu --- it'd be interesting to see if UDb23 also messed around with bluetooth that might have gotten him/her in this state. I suspect if I would have done this on my 4B I would have had the same results.

I'm going to assume that starting from scratch on the image to test the original permission state is no longer really called for at this stage.

BuZz

@ParadoxGBB I'll check that. The background mode shouldn't be needed anymore tbh. It was a hack.

ultranab

Hello no one can help me please no one answered me
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/26182/crash-of-emulationstation

BuZz

@ParadoxGBB I can confirm the permissions issue thanks. I'll sort it.

ParadoxGBB

@BuZz Thanks everyone -- glad to have helped a bit.

UDb23

@BuZz I didn't copy anything on my 4.6 fresh install. Permission issue arose immediately. Of course I should be able to fix with chown.